My breath puffed in icy flumes in front of my face as I made my way across the yard to Evan’s workshop. The building was warm inside, a refuge from the biting cold. Evan had his back to me, and I slipped in undetected. It smelled of cedar shavings and the musky tang of his sweat. He was slicing his way, inch by inch, through a massive tree trunk, his bicep straining against his tee shirt with each thrust of the saw.

There was no telling what the object would be. Maybe a stool. Maybe a table. Maybe it was just going to be a pile of sawdust, serving no purpose other than giving himself an outlet for his misery.

“Hi,” I said.

He dropped the saw without turning toward me and braced his upper body against the block of wood, his muscles still tensed.

“Annie.” He said my name hesitantly, his voice ragged and hoarse. When he finally turned around, I saw he’d been doing his own share of crying. “I’m so—”

“Don’t say, ‘sorry.’” The word had become hollow to me. An empty husk to fit in a hole that couldn’t be filled. I didn’t want apologies. But I did want answers. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

He turned the stump upright and sat down then pulled a stool up next to it for me. A shaky breath escaped him, and his eyes drifted shut. Jen had said it was complicated. I had a hard time seeing how telling someone she had been pregnant was all that complicated, but I wanted to understand. I needed to.

“I did tell you,” he said.

“What?”

“In the hospital. They’d brought you in and gotten you stable. You’d had a concussion, and you had been drifting in and out of consciousness, but you were finally able to stay awake. You kept asking about the baby. They, umm, they told me that we’d lost her, and they asked if I wanted a doctor to tell you or to wait or if I wanted to tell you. I couldn’t let some cold, sterile ER doctor tell you that our daughter was gone. And I couldn’t keep lying to you and pretending everything was fine. So I told you, and . . .”

His voice severed into a ragged, choking sob as he broke down once more.

“It’s okay.” I stroked his hair and ran my thumb across his cheek.

He sat up and brushed the moisture from his face with the back of his hand.

“I told you, and you were hysterical. We couldn’t calm you down. Your blood pressure shot through the roof. They were afraid you were going to stroke out, that they might have missed a clot or a bleed, so they—”

“They put me in a medically-induced coma.”

“I lost our daughter that day. I almost lost my wife. And I swore that I would do anything it took to keep you safe, to keep you alive. Anything. Even if it meant protecting you from the truth.”

“Is that why you’ve been pulling away from me? When we make love?”

He nodded.

“I can’t risk losing you again. I won’t. I knew I would have to tell you sometime. At first, I was waiting for you to regain your strength. And then to heal from all the physical wounds. And then . . . then I was a coward. I couldn’t bear to put you through one more moment of pain.”

“And we hadn’t told anyone. You’ve carried all of this by yourself?”

He reached over and took my hand.

“I’d carry much heavier for you.”

“Why didn’t we tell anyone?”

“That, I can’t answer. You never gave me your reasoning. You just wanted to wait. I trusted you.”

“I think I know the answer.” Amnesia may have stolen my memories, but it hadn’t erased my fears. “I was worried that you resented me for getting pregnant, that you felt trapped into marrying me because I was the mother of your child. I guess I wanted to give you an out. Maybe that was why I was so distraught in the hospital. In the confusion and pain of the accident, I thought it meant I was losing you, too.”

“Annie, you were the mother of my child the first time I laid eyes on you. The mother of all my future children. From the moment we met, I knew there could never be anyone else. Never. I’d be lying if I said that little blue line didn’t speed up the timeline a little. But our wedding—standing before God and man and a beachcomber who couldn’t take a hint and then saying, ‘I do,’—that was the best, most beautiful day of my life.”

Evan gave a sad shrug.

“Actually,” he said, “that’s not true. It was a tie with finding out you were carrying our child.”

“I love you,” I said.

“I love you.”

We held each other, quiet and unmoving. Like two wind-whipped saplings who had grown together, finding strength and ability to weather all the storms they couldn’t on their own.

“So”—I finally broke the silence—“the diaphragm?”

His shoulders shook with laughter.

“No match for my penis.” He shook his head. “Not even close. Pretty sure we got it on the first shot.”

I dissolved into giggles.

“You must have been so shocked when I told you.”

“Best shock of my life.”